Long Enough
by wee-me
Summary: A certain poltergeist takes stock of his life and comes to an important decision. Definitely not a happy little one-shot.


**Long Enough**

Authoress: Wee-Me

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own anything from "Beetlejuice" except my own copy of the DVD and my memories of the cartoon so don't sue me. I'm just going to take the characters for a spin and then put them back where I found them.

Begin

"This has gone on long enough," he said aloud one day, startling himself with the sound of his own voice. Betelgeuse: boogeyman to the dead, scarer of the living, possessor of great power; and he was done.

He only did things he enjoyed, always, and when he ceased enjoying it he quit, simple as that. That was his nature and his way, why should living ('_unliving?'_) be any different?

Alive he had held any job he could after he left home. He'd worked as a blacksmith's apprentice, a farm hand, a bodyguard for a caravan, a messenger, a robber, and a pirate all in the short time he'd had on earth. Life had been hard. Dead he'd worked a long time as an office drone and then Juno's assistant before heading out on his own. His time with Juno was the best.

He missed Juno. Hers was the only name he can remember. It had been maybe a couple centuries, maybe ten for all he knew, since she finished her time in the office and Moved On. He lost a little more of her face each day and could only see her clearly when he slept.

He didn't sleep anymore. It held no joy so it wasn't worth it. Not that his waking world was so much better. All sleep did was show glimpses of people that weren't there when he woke up. Juno, old friends long gone, and a little girl ('_woman? both? can't remember_') that made his heart hurt- all of them out of his considerable reach.

He thought maybe he'd gone a little crazy. He didn't know the half of it. He wondered sometimes if you can know you're crazy even if you are. It's a thought that circles like water down a drain in his brain. He laughed, '_brain drain could be the problem'_. Everyone always said he was crazy and that Juno was crazy for putting up with him, but they had no idea. When Juno left he had already lost his other friends and the little woman-child's name.

'_How big would a spider's skeleton be?'_ he thought suddenly, sure it meant something but it slid from his grasp like smoke.

Juno had been his only friend for so long something in him had cracked deeply in her absence. So when, one dark day, his little sketchpad with all the pictures of Juno, the girl, and all the others he can't remember at all was lost to him all the little cracks fissured open and he came truly apart.

It was stupid. An office drone found the pad on the floor where it had fallen from the basket he'd had to empty his pockets into during questioning ('_not Juno's way, hers was better'_). The drones don't think much, hurts too much, so when he saw paper he threw it in the recycling. There wasn't any malice behind it, just some stiff doing his job on autopilot, but it was still gone. He'd felt it moving away from him, it was always at the edges of his awareness, and howled in true pain when it went into the cleaning vat. All his better parts were in that book captured in the images of other people that had made him care.

The ink, the images, the people, all gone before the book could sink to the bottom. He'd let loose a blast of energy when he pulled the blank book from the vat and Juno's fill-in ('_she could __**never**__ be replaced'_) said, "Damn-it, someday you're going to kill someone!"

So he did.

He'd left the office and threw himself into a century long killing spree. Humans died when he could get them to call him, ghosts or monsters went when he couldn't. Nearly killed one of the Fae; the fairy folk weren't as immortal as he'd thought. He probably had a thousand kills to his name at the very least. The last was a dark-haired teen reading Poe, something about the kid's dead eyes took all the fun out of it.

The authorities had tried to bring him in, but that was never any fun so he hadn't let them. Their surprise that he could deny them was almost amusing. The Fae tried to punish him, but he was only willing to take a few licks over that. It wasn't his fault the little punk hadn't had the good sense to get out of his way. They, Fae and so-called authorities, might have wound up fighting each other about him but he hadn't paid attention.

His power crackled all the time around him with nothing to disguise or hide it. He was fueled by grief, madness, and anger- and not just his own. Now the other ghosties hid cowering from him and it made him stronger. Now the pain leaking out from all the different planes of existence fed him. Now he was more dangerous than ever before. If he'd been in his right mind he might have laughed or worked up the energy to care.

Scaring held no appeal. Pranks were less fun when you didn't know the person, couldn't tailor them. Cons were too much effort. Intellectual pursuits were too much effort. And there wasn't anyone alive or dead he wanted to talk to that he actually could. He'd been sitting in front of his mirror looking at different people for a while (nearly a year; he hadn't noticed) when the revelation struck. "This has gone on long enough." It really had. He nodded to himself, resolved. Time to do something about it.

He knew the way to Juno's office like he knew how to start trouble. It would always be Juno's office to him. The man behind the desk was annoyed to find Betelgeuse suddenly in front of him, but who cared? He wasn't important and Betel couldn't even be sure this was the same one that had come after Juno or what his name might be. Pleasantries were not in the cards for either side of this reaction, not what he was after anyway. "Get rid of me," he croaked in a long disused voice.

The other ghost started in, "What? If this is some gag…"

"No," he spoke with finality, "no more gags. Get rid of me. Exorcise me. Send me On. Just do something to make me not here anymore, I'm not picky."

The suit was wary, and it was tiring. "Why? And why me? I'm sure you've got enough energy to rip apart reality, why not do it yourself?"

Betel nodded. "Reality isn't as firm as people think. I could rip it apart, tear down the dimensional barriers and let them all collide. The walls aren't solid, they let things through and all the pain bleeds through for me to take in. If I gave it a little effort I could rip it all down at once. All the walls. Everywhere." He paused, seemed to consider it.

The suit was disturbed. Then horrified to see the poltergeist twitch his hand and feel reality hum in response like a plucked guitar string. It took the blond a moment to shake it off and come back to himself, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck like he'd just woken up instead of done something impossible. No one was supposed to be able to do that. Too bad they'd never told Betelgeuse that.

"I could do a lot of things," he continued, "but I don't want to. And the one thing I do want is to Move On, and I can't. They took away my name, my Juno, maybe my memories, and now they won't let me leave. I already tried and couldn't, it was the first thing I tried. I wouldn't be here otherwise. Official channels are needed, so do your job and I won't have to play dominoes with the walls." He was crazy, had always been crazy, but cunning as well. The suit couldn't not give in, whole realities were at stake. The stupid 'geist had him over a barrel, not that he'd much wanted to resist getting rid of the abomination before him.

Betelgeuse felt it wash over him. The push of the exorcism was a punishing burn, a fire to cleanse the world of him; he relished the agony as it pulled him apart. He didn't know where he was going or if he'd just be gone, but it didn't matter. He saw all the faces he'd lost rush past him, even his mother's, and he didn't care if it was just memories rushing up from some hidden place in his mind. Then he heard a voice whispering to him: his old name, from when he was alive, and the name he'd taken in the afterlife. He felt the ban lift and tears of joy slid down his face as the magical shackles unlocked. He softly rolled the word off his tongue, "Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse." There was a flash of light and he was gone.

End

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Uh, yeah, I hope no one thought I was done with the angsty, 'hey why don't I kill some people' thing. The angst bunny and I are still working together regularly. Oh and this is the story I mentioned in the forums a while back. Now I've written Betel's death for when he was alive and when he was dead.


End file.
